During the attempt of Lockridge to open the Transit the efforts of the friends of Nicaragua in the United States were more active and fruitful than at any previous period. The Southern States, satisfied of their inability to carry slavery into Kansas, were then prepared to concentrate their labors on Central America; and not only were the men who went to the San Juan of good quality, but they were also furnished with excellent supplies and equipments. Had the same effort and expenditure been made three months earlier, the establishment of the Americans in Nicaragua would have been fixed beyond a peradventure. Since the failure of Lockridge numerous agencies have been employed to re-establish the line of American travel across the Isthmus of Nicaragua: but all without avail. At the very time American youth was engaged in the attempt to force open the Transit for the benefit of those holding the Rivas grant of the 19th of February, 1856, these parties were treacherously dealing with the government of Costa Rica and attempting to secure the franchise from a power having no shadow of a right to bestow it. There have been rumors of grants from Costa Rica and grants from Nicaragua; and the authorities of the latter republic have actually made bargains with several different companies to re-open the Transit. The persons in Nicaragua who desire to keep the Americans out of the country are well aware of the importance to them of keeping the “highway of filibusterism” closed; and all their negotiations for transit grants are “a delusion and a snare.” Often, too, it has been semi-officially announced that the United States government was determined to force open the road across Nicaragua; but as no justification for so violent an act on the part of the United States has been presented, it must be presumed that such declarations are intended merely for popular effect. In fact the American authorities, by an arbitrary act of force, interrupted the only effort which, since December, 1856, has promised successfully to restore the passage across Nicaragua to citizens of the United States. In December, 1857, Col. Anderson, at the head of forty-five men, took the river boats and one lake steamer from the Costa Ricans and restored them to the agent claiming for the American owners; and but for the acts of the United States naval forces the transit across the Isthmus might have been re-established in thirty days. It was the enemies of the naturalized Nicaraguans who closed the Transit; and it is they also who keep it closed. But it is time for us to return to Rivas, and follow the course of events on the Pacific side of the Isthmus. Chapter Twelfth. THE DEFENCE OF RIVAS.